Politico

The Biden administration opted for a controversial plan to pay for at-home Covid-19 testing through private insurance after officials concluded it would be too costly and inefficient to simply send the tests to all Americans for free, three administration officials told POLITICO.

The decision to forgo a European-style approach to testing — which hinges on the government buying and widely distributing rapid tests — has sparked days of backlash, putting the White House on the defensive over its newest plan for containing the virus.

Public health experts have panned the administration’s approach as too complex, zeroing in on a proposal that would require people to submit testing expenses to their insurer for reimbursement. And White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s brusque dismissal when asked earlier this week if the administration considered giving everyone free at-home tests only served to further inflame the administration’s critics, who saw the remarks as glib.

“Offensive and unbecoming of someone representing the White House,” said Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist who advised the Biden transition’s Covid-19 response. “It’s like they want to appear like they’re doing something, but aren’t as concerned about actual impact.”

The White House has since sought to salvage the rollout, emphasizing its broader efforts to make Covid-19 tests freely available in hospitals, doctor’s offices and community centers.

“We’ve considered and continue to consider a host of options as we continue to work to support testing access and affordability,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson said on Thursday, highlighting the administration’s tripling of free testing locations and plans to distribute 50 million free tests to community sites.

But within the administration, the criticism has rankled aides who contend that the sheer price tag of handing out hundreds of millions of rapid tests — combined with the likelihood that a significant percentage would end up going unused — makes creating such a universal program on the fly untenable in the U.S.

The cost of regularly sending all Americans at-home tests could quickly skyrocket and become unsustainable, officials said, pointing to the nearly $50 billion “test and trace” program that the U.K. put in place for a country that’s one-fifth the size.

Congress did allocate roughly $48 billion earlier this year for Covid-19 testing. But only $9.4 billion remains uncommitted, and there are already plans to spend that amount in the coming months, the HHS spokesperson said.

That means the White House would need to go back to lawmakers for more money to fund any kind of tests-for-all system, effectively ruling out quick action and threatening to bog the administration down in another partisan funding fight.

Biden officials working on the Covid-19 response have also questioned how many Americans would take advantage of free at-home tests, and how much their availability would help rein in the virus.

In the U.K. and Germany, caseloads are spiking once again despite extensive reliance on rapid tests to slow the virus’ spread. A similar approach would likely be even less effective in the U.S., officials said, because of how politicized the pandemic response has become.

Administration officials worried that large percentages of rapid tests in areas hardest-hit by Covid-19 would go unused because of skepticism over the federal response, eating up supply that could be directed elsewhere.

There is similar skepticism over whether most Americans prefer taking regular rapid tests, rather than seeking out more accurate PCR tests when needed.

“The primary channel people are getting tested isn’t at home,” the HHS spokesperson said. “Samples are taken primarily at pharmacies and health care providers.”

Looming over the internal deliberations was a bigger and more fundamental question: whether the federal government should effectively take over the burgeoning at-home test market by buying up all its products.

Just 13 companies are authorized to sell over-the-counter tests in the U.S., though many more are still waiting to get green-lighted by the FDA. Even amid fears of a Covid-19 resurgence, Biden officials fretted that intervening now would stifle competition and discourage newer test makers from scaling up their manufacturing.

“It would’ve capped the market and not done anything to drive prices down,” a senior administration official said.

Instead, the official added, the administration is betting that staying out of the way “gets more players into the market, which gets more tests in the market, which drives down the cost.”

That approach hasn’t won much support outside the government, especially amid fears that the Omicron variant will drive a new wave of infections. Rapid tests are still expensive and in short supply, preventing people from making regular testing part of their routine. Health experts argue large government purchases of home tests could be made at a far lower cost than their retail price.

Proponents also contend that there’s growing demand for at-home testing, if the administration made it more accessible. In New Hampshire, 800,000 tests were ordered within a day after they were offered for free to all residents as part of a National Institutes of Health study.

“For this next phase of the pandemic, rapid access to rapid testing will be key,” Nirav Shah, who heads Maine’s Center for Disease Control, said last week. “We want to make sure that the supply is there to meet that demand.”

A diagnostics industry source said the Biden administration deserves some credit for the approximately $3 billion of recent investments into rapid tests, but more needs to be done to ensure there is not a shortage of tests in the future.

“We really should be focusing on augmenting existing policy and doubling down and making sure we have the strongest manufacturing possible to get us over any dips in demand that may come about, understanding that we could have yet another increase in demand that we can’t see beyond the horizon,” the source said.

The current supply of over-the-counter tests is also a practical barrier. The number of at-home tests being manufactured per month is expected to reach 200 million this month, 240 million in January and 300 million in February, according to a readout of a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call with states obtained by POLITICO.

The White House in the meantime is weathering blowback over its alternative plan, which will require private insurers to reimburse Americans for the cost of their at-home tests. Health experts largely dismissed the concept as convoluted and ineffectual, especially since it requires people to purchase the tests up front and submit receipts to get paid back.

Those reimbursement requirements won’t go into effect for weeks and are not retroactive, meaning they’ll do little to make testing more affordable as travel picks up for the holidays.

“There are so many details that still need to be hammered out,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. “I cannot imagine it is falling into place in the way that we need for this move to have any meaningful dent on the trajectory of the pandemic.”

The administration is still trying to fill in details of major elements of the plan, such as how to streamline the reimbursement process and prevent testmakers from charging insurers excessive rates.

The White House did not consult with major insurance industry groups on the specifics of the proposal beforehand, and gave them fewer than 24 hours notice that it would be part of Biden’s broader Covid-19 blueprint, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Some administration officials and close Biden allies have shared in the frustration over testing, privately deriding the reimbursement plan as an unforced error. They also pointed to the White House’s decision earlier this year not to invest more heavily in building a broader national testing apparatus, including in finding ways to ramp up manufacturing of at-home tests.

“This is something we all had talked about 10 months ago,” said one person close to the White House, who called the reimbursement concept a “ridiculous idea.”

“This isn’t about money,” the person added. “This is about imagination and excellent execution.”

Yet others said the calculation was simpler: For much of the year, it just didn’t seem like a massive testing system would be necessary, thanks to the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines. Then the Delta variant hit, changing the course of the pandemic and upending the administration’s path out of the crisis. The number of new Covid-19 infections climbed from fewer than 12,000 a day over the summer to more than 160,000 in early September.

“They were just overly confident in June that we were turning a corner and this was going to be game over,” Gounder said.

Even as its testing strategy expands, the White House has emphasized that vaccination remains the core component of its response — most recently pouring resources into efforts to get more Americans booster shots.

“There’s a willingness to spend whatever it takes to get every U.S. citizen vaccinated, but as Jen Psaki clearly expressed in her press conference, an unwillingness to spend whatever it takes to get everyone tested,” Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in the Trump administration, told POLITICO.

Still, Biden officials have bristled over the pushback, complaining that the loudest proponents of a massive testing system have also ignored the political and logistical challenges standing in the way.

“Where we agree is that testing is a critical part of the response,” the senior administration official said. “Our pathway is multiple paths for people to get free tests. It’s less of the single, easy-to-grasp solution that people on Twitter like to hold up as a model.”

The White House on Monday announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, citing China’s persecution of ethnic Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region and other human rights abuses.

“The athletes on Team USA have our full support,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her Monday briefing. “We will be behind them 100 percent as we cheer them on from home. We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games.”

The administration’s decision — a diplomatic half measure which will allow American athletes to compete in the games but bar U.S. government officials from attending — comes after the United States has repeatedly criticized China’s ruling Communist Party for a string of human rights issues, provocative geopolitical maneuvers, unfair economic and forced labor practices, and a lack of international cooperation.

Specifically, U.S. officials have expressed concerns about China’s recent aggression toward Taiwan, its anti-democratic crackdown in Hong Kong, its pursuit of hypersonic weapons technology, its secrecy surrounding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, its significant maritime claims in the South China Sea, its refusal to embrace more meaningful climate change reforms and its treatment of vanished Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai.

The news of the diplomatic boycott on Monday follows a face-to-face video meeting last month between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Although that three-and-a-half-hour virtual session produced no concrete deliverables, it also did not devolve into the type of acrimony that punctuated prior U.S.-China talks earlier in the year.

The first high-level engagement between U.S. and Chinese officials of Biden’s presidency — which took place in Alaska in March — ended bitterly, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken assessing that “there are a number of areas where we are fundamentally at odds” after a much-anticipated summit in Alaska. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman received a similarly chilly welcome when she met Chinese officials in Tianjin in July.

Claire Rafford contributed to this report.

To really cut someone down to size, give them a brutal nickname they just can’t shake. That’s a rule as familiar on the schoolyard as it is in the White House.

The infighting that consumed Donald Trump’s administration was no secret, but the recent onslaught of insider-y books on his presidency has delivered new texture about the gossipy backstabbing that took place — sometimes with real world ramifications.

According to former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham’s I’ll Take Your Questions Now, White House staffers used to call Ivanka Trump “the Princess,” while Grisham called Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner “the Slim Reaper” for his tendency to destroy other staffers’ work. First lady Melania Trump, who tended not to leave the White House much, was called “Rapunzel” by the Secret Service. White House aide and current congressional candidate Max Miller was nicknamed “the Music Man” because he used to play soothing songs, including “Memory” from Cats, to calm Trump down during presidential tantrums.

In I Alone Can Fix It, by the journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, we learn that the Kushner recruits brought in to try to stem the coronavirus crisis were called “the Slim Suit Crowd” by staffers at FEMA and “that whizbang crew of numb nuts” by West Wing aides. In Michael Wolff’s Landslide, it emerges that the young data guru Matt Oczkowski, who was kept away from Trump because he was so nerdy, was called “Oz” because of his name as well as his behind-the-curtain data wizardry. We also learn that Trump called pollster Tony Fabrizio “Fat Tony” — not the most creative nickname — but Michael Bender’s Frankly, We Did Win This Election tells us that Fabrizio had another nickname that he himself embraced, “The Rat.”

In the Joe Biden administration, fewer nicknames have thus far been reported, but Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book Peril reveals that White House senior adviser Mike Donilon earned the sobriquet ‘Mr. Silent.’ That’s because he is so quiet on phone calls that other aides often forget he is on until Biden solicits his opinion.

Nicknames are nothing new in the rough and tumble world of politics. In fact, their use goes back at least to Roman times: the Roman General Fabius was called Cunctator (Delayer) for his passive tactics, while Pompey got the name Adulescentulus Carnifex (the teenaged butcher) for his aggressive military style. As the Romans knew, a good nickname can capture the essence of the person.

But in the White House, nicknaming can have another purpose: a way to undercut one’s internal rivals. Indeed, nicknaming one’s colleagues and supposed allies ultimately reveals more about the dubber than the dubbed. The need to diminish, to push aside, to get ahead all emerges when trying to distill the essence of a colleague into a pejorative moniker. And if we look back in American history, it’s clear that’s one norm Trump didn’t break.

Kennedy & Johnson

We see this dynamic frequently in the John F. Kennedy presidency, where nicknames revealed who was on which team in intra-administration divides.

The core Kennedy players, especially Attorney General and presidential brother Robert F. Kennedy, loathed Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and used nicknames to demonstrate their disdain. At dinners at the Kennedy home of Hickory Hill and at fancy Georgetown parties, Kennedy acolytes referred to the vice president with names like “Rufus Cornpone” and “Judge Crater” — referring to a judge who, like the vice president, had “disappeared.” Ethel Kennedy even got in on the action, called Johnson “Huckleberry Capone.”

Lady Bird Johnson did not escape the attention either; the vice presidential couple was referred to as “Uncle Cornpone and his Little Pork Chop.”

Johnson was aware of these slights and had his own nicknames for Kennedy and his brother, referring to President Kennedy as “the boy” and “Johnny,” and Bobby Kennedy as “Sonny boy.” The use of nicknames went beyond just the Johnson-Kennedy enmity. Also coming in for mockery from Kennedy aides was the group of journalists and hangers-on centered around the intellectual yet ineffectual undersecretary of State Chester Bowles. This group’s nickname? “The Chet Set.”

Nixon

Deploying nicknames against one another is, of course, a bipartisan tradition. In the Richard Nixon administration, national security adviser Henry Kissinger privately referred to the president as “that madman,” “our drunken friend” and “the meatball mind.” Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman had his own nicknames for Nixon, including the “Old Man,” “Rufus,” “The Leader of the Free World” and, in his diaries, “P.” Haldeman himself was known as one of “the Germans,” along with his colleague, domestic policy adviser John Ehrlichman.

More entertainingly, Labor Secretary Peter Brennan, a blue-collar New Yorker, was called Secretary Bunker, after All in the Family’s Archie Bunker. And ethnic outreach staffer Mike Balzano, who came from waste management, was known as “the garbage man,” both for his previous job and for his White House responsibilities.

Some of the top reporters of the era also did not fail to escape the nicknaming. The foreign correspondents who covered the famously press-friendly Kissinger were called “the Choirboys” because they were supposedly so close to Kissinger.

Carter

In the Jimmy Carter administration, the president’s cousin Hugh Carter, brought in to save money in White House operations, was tagged as “Cousin Cheap” for his cost-cutting efforts. Hyper-aggressive national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski got tagged as “Woody Woodpecker” for a combination of his behavior, his red hair and his angular features.

That and other nicknames were seen by one staffer as an indication of Brzezinski’s lower standing in the White House relative to other aides. As an anonymous Carter told the Washington Post, “Inside the White House I don’t think Zbig could win a major battle with Ham [Jordan] or Jody [Powell]. There’s no question that if Jody wanted to take Zbig on Zbig would get his a– handed to him. Just look at all the nicknames they call him.”

Reagan and Bush

Under Ronald Reagan, nicknames remained nasty, but they became more purposeful. When Ed Meese, a top adviser who had once been Reagan’s gubernatorial chief of staff, made a play for White House chief of staff, he found himself fighting off perceptions that he was disorganized. Meese’s opponents eagerly seized on his famous briefcase, into which papers would go at night, never to be seen again. The briefcase itself scored multiple nicknames, including “a briefcase without a bottom,” “the black hole” and, most legendarily, the “Meesecase.” This may be the only time that an aide’s possession got a nickname.

Very rarely, a nickname has helped someone get a job. Reagan tapped Caspar Weinberger for secretary of Defense in part based on his cost-cutting reputation as a former OMB director, captured in the nickname “Cap the Knife.” Once Weinberger was ensconced at the Pentagon, however, Reagan budget chief David Stockman would discover to his chagrin that the reputation conveyed by the nickname did not carry over to Weinberger’s new position.

A more nefarious nickname plan came from Reagan press aide Larry Speakes, who deliberately tagged rival David Gergen as “the Tall Guy,” later shortened to “Tall,” in an effort to diminish him. Speakes supplemented his anti-Gergen efforts with jokes — “Gergen had been kidnapped as a child and raised by giraffes” — and dirty tricks. Speakes would have the podium lowered and the screws tightened so that Gergen would tower above it, looking ridiculous. Of course, Gergen caused some of his own problems as well with his closeness to the press. Reagan national security adviser Richard Allen called Gergen “Professor Leaky,” and even thought that Gergen was slipping in and out of the Situation Room during the fraught period after Reagan was shot to give surreptitious updates to the press.

Nancy Reagan, who held a lot of power in her husband’s White House, had a slew of nicknames. According to Karen Tumulty’s recent The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, the first lady was called “The Iron Butterfly,” “The Belle of Rodeo Drive,” “Fancy Nancy,” “The Cutout Doll,” “The Evita of Bel Air,” “Mommie Dearest,” “The Hairdo with Anxiety,” “The Ice Queen” and “Attila the Hen.” All of these handles revealed a core truth of the Reagan administration: Nancy was a key player, and aides crossed her at their peril.

Another first lady who could be brutal in her assessments of staff was Barbara Bush. When longtime Bush friend and political fixer James Baker reluctantly gave up his job as secretary of State to try to rescue President George Bush’s floundering 1992 reelection campaign, Barbara felt that Baker was not fully engaged in the effort. According to Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s The Man Who Ran Washington, Mrs. Bush would derisively call Baker “The Invisible Man,” prompting the president to say, “Barb, get off his case.”

Clinton

Many of the nicknames in the Clinton administration highlighted ideological divisions within that White House. In 1994, when Bill Clinton and the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades, Clinton brought in conservative adviser Dick Morris to help “triangulate” himself back into the good graces of the American people. This led to epic struggles between Morris and the more liberal aides like George Stephanopoulos and Harold Ickes. Ickes’ longstanding willingness to take on unsavory tasks for Clinton led to his being nicknamed “the garbage man” and “director of the sanitation department.” Ickes and his allies called the quirky Morris “the Unabomber,” while Morris referred to Ickes and company as “the thugocracy.”

Stephanopoulos meanwhile got a stand-alone nickname when he left the White House, wrote a tell-all book and became a pundit, leading aggrieved aides still in the administration to call him ABC News “commentraitor” George Stephanopoulos. Another Clinton-era nickname magnet was Sidney Blumenthal, known as “Sid Vicious” for his sharp pen as a journalist. Once in the White House, he was so prone to conspiracy theories that he was called “GK,” for the Grassy Knoll theory of a second shooter favored by Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.

Bush II

In the George W. Bush administration, the nicknaming impulse came from the very top. Bush loved giving team members nicknames — generally, though not always, friendly ones. Political strategist Karl Rove was known as “The Architect” or “Turd Blossom,” depending on whether he was in favor that day. OMB Director Mitch Daniels was “The Blade,” speechwriter Michael Gerson was “The Scribe,” and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was “The Big O.”

Bush himself was no stranger to being nicknamed. In his father’s administration, the late Colin Powell used to call the future president (and his future boss) “Sonny”; Bush was also called “The Lip,” for his big mouth, at Andover, and his wife Laura Bush used to call him “Bushie,” especially when she wanted to put him in his place.

W’s nicknames, and his own experience as a nicknaming victim, suggest that he learned early on their value as a form of prep school-style hazing. At the same time, earning a nickname from the president became a badge of honor for mid-level staffers in the Bush White House, demonstrating that the president knew them sufficiently to tag them. These included energy expert Robert McNally (“Electric Bob”), campaign personal assistant Israel Hernandez (“Altoid Boy”), and second-term speechwriter Jonathan Horn (“Horny”). Another possible reason for Bush’s use of nicknames, suggested by Indiana University’s Michael Adams, was Bush’s love of baseball, a sport that revels in great nicknames.

Among the Bush staff, though, the nicknames were more cutting. The vice president’s chief of staff David Addington, a sharp-elbowed internal player, was nicknamed “Keyser Sӧze,” after the ruthless, mysterious mob boss in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects. James Comey, then the deputy attorney general but already carrying a reputation for being sanctimonious, was nicknamed “Saint Jim.”

Obama

Nicknames abounded even in the “no-drama” Obama administration as well. Jim Jones, Barack Obama’s first national security adviser, was frustrated with second-guessing from the Obama team and left the White House on poor terms. He used to call young White House staffers “the water bugs,” and the White House itself “the Politburo.”

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes was so critical of Israel that his nickname in the White House was “Hamas.” Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett’s propensity for getting her way in policy disputes by making her case during nocturnal visits to her friends Barack and Michelle Obama in the White House residence earned her the nickname “The Night Stalker.” And Homeland Security Adviser — and now Biden Deputy Attorney General — Lisa Monaco’s steady stream of dire security warnings led Obama to dub her “Dr. Doom.”

Trump

The Trump administration, however, put all its predecessors to shame in terms of the sheer number of nicknames. Even before the recent books came out, everyone knew that Trump had insulting nicknames for his political opponents — “Crooked Hillary,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Pocahontas,” “Lyin’ Ted” and “Little Marco.”

Trump was also prone to tag his own team members with nicknames, some more positive than others. Communications director Hope Hicks was “Hopey,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was “Ditsy” DeVos, chief of staff John Kelly was “The Church Lady,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was “Mr. Peepers,” and RNC head Ronna Romney McDaniel was “My Romney,” distinguishing her from her Trump-critic uncle, Sen. Mitt Romney. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was blessed with multiple unflattering nicknames, including “Mr. Magoo” and “Benjamin Button.”

Former Trump aide Steve Bannon claims that one of Trump’s favorite books is Carl Jung’s autobiography, Memory, Dreams, Reflections, and that Trump’s derisive nicknames derive from an understanding of Jungian archetypes. (Trump probably did not read the book but Bannon likely did.)

Trump staff, probably encouraged by the example of their principal, also dubbed one another with a host of nicknames both entertaining and illuminating in a factionalized White House. Kelly reportedly called the youthful Hicks “the high schooler.” Kelly Deputy Chief of Staff Kirstjen Nielsen, later the secretary of Homeland Security, tried to impose stricter discipline on White House operations, and was dubbed “Nurse Ratched” for her efforts. Another deputy chief of staff, Zachary Fuentes, earned the moniker “ZOTUS,” a play on the first letter of his first name and the widely used White House abbreviation for president of the United States.

Pro-trade and pro-immigration economic adviser Gary Cohn was tagged “Globalist Gary” by his nationalist rivals; some Trump aides shortened this to an emoji when referring to Cohen via text as 🌎. Other aides who got the emoji treatment were Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, referred to as an open mouth, or 😘; and chief of staff Reince Priebus, who was often called “Prancer,” had a reindeer emoji: 🦌.

So far, there have been fewer nicknames to publicly emerge from the Biden administration. There are no doubt tensions and rivalries, including some recently revealed ones between the presidential and vice presidential staffs, but Biden does not like reading about palace intrigue in the press, so aides are probably less likely to brag about their nicknaming triumphs. As more time passes, some tell-alls will surely emerge from this White House with nickname revelations, but they are unlikely to be as frequent — or as juicy — as the ones from the Trump memoirs.

What’s clear from the history of presidential nicknaming is that there is more to it than just locker room talk. In politics, as in life, nicknames help encapsulate the essence of a person, or at least that’s what the nicknamers hope. Nicknaming in the White House is not done idly. It has a purpose, albeit typically an unpleasant one. And as long as power is up for grabs and jealousies are sparked by ambitious players, the nicknames won’t be going anywhere.

Kamala Harris is undergoing yet another transition.

Less than a year after assembling a mostly new team to help settle her into the vice presidency, key members of Harris’ orbit are leaving and even more are eyeing the exits.

Some Harris confidantes and Democratic allies are urging her to more aggressively embrace the concept of a reset, arguing that she needs to put her rocky first year behind her and openly embrace the idea that she’s entering a new phase. But others, including some top aides, are resistant to signaling a major shift is afoot, suggesting that the internal restructuring only feeds a narrative of disorder and that most of the new blood coming to the vice president’s office won’t be visible to the wider public anyway.

Harris sidestepped questions about the staff turnover and potential for a reset when asked about it by POLITICO, and her office declined to comment for this story. But behind the scenes, advisers have spent weeks researching possible replacements for important posts and feeling out others who passed on roles in the office earlier this year, to see if they would be more amenable to joining in a second round.

Four staffers have announced their departures from the vice president’s office in recent weeks. They include the high-profile exit by one of Harris’ closest aides, Symone Sanders, who serves as senior adviser and chief spokesperson, as well as Ashley Etienne, the office’s communications director. Officials maintain those departures were long-planned and not evidence of the turmoil. But they are part of a wave that could grow larger as staff inside the vice president’s office review other opportunities. More aides in Harris’ office have expressed interest in leaving, according to people familiar with those conversations.

Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist close to the White House and vice president’s office, stressed that turnover at this level of government isn’t surprising — especially in the case of Sanders, one of the first people President Joe Biden hired when he ran for president. But she said the new vacancies give Harris a chance to reassess.

“Every opportunity that you get in politics to renew and repurpose is a good opportunity,” Brazile said in an interview. “In every stage of [Harris’] life, there were people she could bring with her and then there were people that she had to pick up along the way because of the new responsibilities. And I think that this is an opportunity like she’s done with throughout her career to find people who are able to take their seats at the table because guess what? There’s something new on the menu.”

The shakeup among Harris’ staff has led to speculation about how she and her top aides have managed the office, as well as her own capacity as a boss. Aware of the grumbling, top Harris allies are defending her leadership skills, while characterizing the withdrawals as part of the usual burnout that comes from working in a pressure-cooker environment. There is fear among some confidants that if she is not more centrally involved in hiring at her office, a frustrating first year could become a more painful second one.

“If she’s not allowed to select her own people or have a lot of say in picking her own people, she’s f—ed,” a longtime Harris confidant told POLITICO, arguing she needs loyalists who also maintain support and trust within Biden’s inner circle.

The Biden administration over the summer had already brought in a pair of fixers — Lorraine Voles and Adam Frankel — to assess the vice president’s operation and institute changes. They have shared little about any internal changes, but a person close to Harris described Voles as “a calming influence” who has streamlined bottlenecks.

The vice president’s team declined to comment on what specifically has changed since Voles and Frankel, a former Barack Obama speechwriter, joined the office, but officials acknowledged they were handling long-term planning and organizational development.

Democratic strategists and people closely aligned with both Harris and Biden view the pending reshaping of the office as an important moment for the White House, one where they can plot out how to better deploy a historic figure in the vice president role.

And with the departures of Sanders and Etienne, who are both Black, there’s also been renewed focus among
Democrats to continue to push for more diversity in major jobs and across the Biden administration moving forward.

Harris’ allies also view it as an opportunity for her to embrace a more active role in shaping her coverage. Among them, there is a growing sense of frustration over what is viewed as over-torqued critiques that feed a doomsday assessment of her standing and political future.

“There are definitely some improvements that are widely acknowledged that need to be made in that office. And those improvements are acknowledged by the people in her office and they are acknowledged by the people in the White House,” said a Democratic strategist with ties to Bidenworld.

The strategist added the even though there’s a lot of “talented people in the office,” Harris is now presented with an opportunity to take lessons learned from the first year and “structure the office in a way that meets the needs and goals of what she’s trying to accomplish and what she is accomplishing for the administration.”

Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist who has worked on campaigns for Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams, said that despite the headlines, Harris had done laudable work on voting rights, meeting with people not traditionally heard from around D.C., and by helping put a “human face” on the president’s sprawling legislative agenda via her travel around the country.

“Vice President Harris is doing the job of the vice president,” Finney said. “That is to be the No. 2, to help push and get passed the president’s agenda, to represent the United States around the world and help repair our global alliances; and on the pandemic to get the aid package passed and travel the country urging Americans to get vaccinated.”

Harris has long had trouble finding her early footing in offices to which she’d just been elected, even those where she had considerable experience. In the span of a decade — 2011 to 2021 — she rose from attorney general of California to U.S. senator to vice president.

With the exception of her four years in the U.S. Senate, the learning curve has led to early missteps and rough patches in every job she’s held. But she’s always recovered, in part by excelling in the work, aides noted. “And that recovery is a result of people focusing on what she is doing and not on what people are saying,” one longtime former Harris aide said.

Harris has few advisers around her with long-standing personal relationships. And throughout her career in elected office, there have been staff exoduses. However, it wasn’t until her tailspin in the 2020 presidential campaign that they began to creep into the actual news coverage of her. Some fear that if she doesn’t create some stability within the top ranks of her office with the necessary help of Biden’s team, that type of coverage will come to define her.

“The ceaseless staff turnover will continue unless the White House takes charge and provides stewardship for the vice president’s office,” said Gil Duran, a former top Harris aide in California who is now the opinion editor of the San Francisco Examiner. “The stakes for President Biden and the nation are high, and so this narrative of division and dysfunction must be swiftly put to rest.”

Harris’ press operation is undergoing the most visible retooling. When it was conceived, officials conceded, neither the White House nor Harris’ office was prepared for the level of scrutiny on the vice president, both for the historic nature of her position and as the No. 2 to a president many Democrats aren’t convinced will run again in 2024.

“Her press corps, her press contingency, is much larger and much more robust than previous vice presidents,” a Democratic strategist aligned with the White House said. “There’s just a different level of scrutiny and a different level of coverage. That goes back to the original discussion about how the team can construct the office in a way that helps meet those demands of the press corps in this press environment.”

Harris, herself a relative newcomer to Washington, has had to adapt to the traditionally understated role of vice president. She has been reluctant to forge relationships with members of the news media, and there has been little in the way of proactive pitching of stories on her — magnifying the impact of process pieces from mainstream press outlets and fierce criticism from right-wing outlets.

“Why is it that if Kamala goes to the bathroom, everybody says ‘she used toilet paper’ or if she goes into the kitchen, everyone says ‘she bought a new pot?’” Brazile said. “How many people have left the West Wing? How many people have said, ‘I’m only going to do this for six months.’ There’s this insatiable appetite to carry every conversation that Kamala is having into the press but it’s never one that says, actually, what’s going on.”

President Joe Biden has staked his presidency on defeating the pandemic. But nearly a year into his term, the administration is crashing into the limits of its power to end the nation’s fight against Covid-19. And in the few places where it could go further, it seems unwilling to do so, as of now.

Beset by rising cases, falling approval ratings and the emergence of a worrying new variant, Biden on Thursday pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and promised more measures to slow the virus’ spread — unveiling what the White House is touting as a wide-ranging plan to avert a winter resurgence of the virus.

The reality, however, is that most of the steps the administration plans to take are continuations or modest expansions of existing initiatives, and some experts doubt they will do much to change the pandemic’s current trajectory.

“He’s facing a hostile public, a hostile political opposition and a hostile judiciary,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University global health law professor in touch with the White House. “And so the only things left to do are things that are largely ineffective.”

Biden announced on Thursday that his government will launch campaigns to expand access to vaccines and booster shots, institute stricter travel requirements and open a path toward free at-home Covid-19 testing.

The so-called winter Covid strategy was already in the works before the Omicron variant was discovered late last month, born of a rise in Delta cases across the nation as more people congregated indoors and gathered for the holidays. But a new sense of urgency has gripped the West Wing to display leadership against the virus.

“He has to go out because people expect to hear from the president at times like this,” said David Axelrod, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “He is working with what he has. He has been trying to use this as a moment to regenerate a sense of urgency on vaccinations. We’ll see how that goes.”

Biden, for his part, implored the country to come together to fight the latest iteration of the virus, which continues to kill hundreds of Americans each day. “This is a moment we can put the divisiveness behind us, I hope,” the president said Thursday during a speech at the National Institutes of Health. “It should unite us, not continue to separate us.”

But even as the president promised that his new approach “pulls no punches in the fight against Covid-19,” his administration is stopping short of the more aggressive measures that health experts believe would more quickly rein in the pandemic — like vaccine mandates for domestic travel, more rigorous public health restrictions and enforced quarantines — wary of further inflaming GOP opposition and demoralizing an exhausted public.

Political divisions have already stymied many of the administration’s efforts to end the pandemic. The White House is in the midst of a legal fight for the survival of sweeping vaccine mandates for employers and health care workers, which Biden officials have cast as crucial tools for inoculating the vast majority of the nation.

“We’re not going to get the unvaccinated vaccinated unless we have mandates — it’s that simple,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and former Covid adviser to the Biden transition. “We’ve plateaued at 60 percent [vaccination], and that’s just not going to get us there.”

The Biden administration also continues to battle GOP governors over mask mandates and vaccination requirements that could help tamp down cases in the hardest-hit states. In states like Florida and Texas, Republican leaders have championed their resistance to those preventative steps, even as national Covid-19 hospitalizations tick up and deaths hover around 1,000 per day.

And throughout it all, officials are struggling to counter widespread misinformation around its vaccination drive, fanned by conservative pundits and Republicans lawmakers alike — a campaign that has hardened opposition to the shots among the roughly 45 million adult holdouts who have yet to get vaccinated.

Administration officials and others close to the Covid response concede there’s little in Biden’s new plan that’s likely to drive up the vaccination rate among those yet to get their first shots.

While they do believe that fear of Omicron will convince people to get immunized, the White House in recent days has shifted much of its attention in recent days to shoring up the ranks of the already vaccinated. Though Biden health officials don’t yet know how well the current vaccines protect against Omicron, they’ve concluded that boosters provide the fullest protection — a belief that’s become the driving force behind new campaigns to get all vaccinated adults their booster shots.

The new plan unveiled Thursday would ramp up outreach to families and older Americans, in a bid to accelerate vaccinations for children and boosters for adults and the most vulnerable.

The administration will also more closely track travelers into the U.S. and encourage more frequent testing, potentially giving officials a better picture of the virus’ spread and helping to head off outbreaks.

In perhaps the most significant new initiative, private insurers will soon be required to reimburse the cost of at-home tests — though those procedures will take weeks to set up and could prove complicated in practice.

But much of Biden’s new nine-point Covid-19 plan for winter builds on existing initiatives that the White House laid out in earlier plans issued for the fall, and for the summer before that. None have yet managed to chart a path for Biden around the political resistance that’s prolonged the pandemic and blunted the effectiveness of its Covid-19 response.

In February 2021, POLITICO’s The Recast launched with a grand goal: evolve how we think about, talk about and cover power.

The newsletter is our effort to reveal just how deeply race and identity are woven into the DNA of American politics and policy. In the midst of a pandemic, an ongoing racial reckoning and a new administration in Washington, we’ve covered everything from historic mayoral elections to the struggle to reform immigration policy. We’ve sat down with people like the new head of EMILY’s List, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Florida Rep. Brian Mast and yes, even John Legend. We’ve seen the tides of power shift and a rise in “outsiders” becoming “insiders.”

So, on our one-year anniversary in February 2022, we’re launching The Recast Power List.

Do you have thoughts on which fresh faces are rising to prominence? Or which established faces are trying new, interesting things? Tell us in the form below.

People who get selected for The Recast Power List should fit the following criteria:

• Actionable influence. Their statement/work/action led to a measurable change.
• That change happened within February 2021 and February 2022
• Disruptor of status quo. They’re not just the first Asian/Native American/Latino/Black person in X position, but they’re actually shifting how things have been done.
• Politically outspoken
• Not too obvious or on too many lists

So give us your recommendations! And if you want to make sure you don’t miss the launch of The Recast Power List — or check out the cool work we do every week — subscribe to our newsletter.

All the best,
The Recast Team

The Biden administration today said it would soon require private health insurers to cover the cost of at-home Covid-19 tests as part of an effort to tamp down infections during the winter months.

The new policy means that the more than 150 million Americans with private coverage will be able to get reimbursed for the rapid tests as long as they submit their expenses for reimbursement.

The change represents the core of a ramped-up effort to encourage more widespread testing, in a renewed bid to slow the virus’ spread and better track the emerging Omicron variant. The administration today also unveiled a wide-ranging strategy aimed at making Covid-19 vaccines more widely and easily available ahead of the winter.

The administration appears to be relying on authorities within the Families First Coronavirus Response Act that direct private insurers to provide coverage and not impose cost sharing of diagnostic tests that detect Covid-19 during the public health emergency.

“This is our assessment of that, that it should cover, and it must cover at-home tests for Americans on that private insurance,” a senior administration official told reporters.

However, the requirement will not take effect immediately. Three federal departments — Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury — must still issue official guidance on the reimbursement requirement, language that may not be published until Jan. 15.

The forthcoming policy change will also not be retroactive, meaning people will not be able to obtain reimbursement for at-home tests they already purchased, the senior administration official said. It is also unclear if limitations will be placed on the number of at-home tests individuals can submit for reimbursement.

“Individuals will generally need to submit receipts to their insurer,” White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz wrote in an email. “Further details will be included in the guidance the tri-Departments are developing.”

It appears insurers will still not be required to cover costs tied to workplace screening programs — a fact sheet issued by the White House states such testing will “remain consistent with current guidance.”

“Plans and issuers are not required to provide coverage of testing such as for public health surveillance or employment purposes,” current guidance states.

The policy also will not apply to Americans with insurance through public programs like Medicare and Medicaid or those without insurance. The White House separately said it plans to expand the number of free tests distributed through community sites, including rural clinics, to 50 million tests, up from 25 million.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is set to kick off a more urgent campaign for Americans to get Covid-19 booster shots Thursday as he unveils his winter plans for combating the coronavirus and its omicron variant with enhanced availability of shots and vaccines but without major new restrictions.

The plan includes a requirement for private insurers to cover the cost of at-home Covid-19 tests and a tightening of testing requirements for people entering the U.S. regardless of their vaccination status. But as some other nations close their borders or reimpose lockdowns, officials said Biden was not moving to impose additional restrictions beyond his recommendation that Americans wear masks indoors in public settings.

Biden said Wednesday that the forthcoming strategy, to be unveiled during a speech at the National Institutes of Health, would fight the virus “not with shutdowns or lockdowns but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing, and more.”

The White House released details of Biden’s plan early Thursday, in advance of the speech.

The Biden administration has come to view widespread adoption of booster shots as its most effective tool for combating Covid-19 this winter. Medical experts say boosters provide enhanced and more enduring protection against Covid-19, including new variants.

Much remains unknown about the omicron variant, including whether it is more contagious, whether it makes people more seriously ill and whether it can thwart the vaccines.

About 100 million Americans are eligible for boosters under current U.S. policy, with more becoming eligible every day. Convincing those who have already been vaccinated to get another dose, officials believe, will be far easier than vaccinating the roughly 43 million adult Americans who haven’t gotten a shot despite widespread public pressure campaigns to roll up their sleeves.

And while Biden’s vaccination-or-testing requirement for workers at larger employers has been held up by legal challenges, the president on Thursday will renew his call for businesses to move ahead and impose their own mandates on workers so they can stay open without outbreaks.

In a effort to encourage more people to take the booster doses, the Biden administration is stepping up direct outreach to seniors — the population most vulnerable to the virus. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will send a notice to all 63 million Medicare beneficiaries encouraging them to get booster doses, the White House said. The AARP will work with the administration on education campaigns for seniors.

So far about 42 million Americans, about half of them seniors, have received a booster dose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week broadened its booster dose recommendation to cover all Americans aged at least 18 starting six months after their second dose of the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer or Moderna.

The White House said the CDC was also developing new guidance for schools in an effort to reduce or eliminate current quarantine requirements for those are not fully vaccinated and exposed to the virus. The new policies, which the White House said will be released in the coming weeks, could include so-called “test-to-stay” policies, in which those who are considered close contacts can continue to go to school but wear masks and undergo serial testing, in a bid to minimize learning loss and disruption.

The administration’s upcoming rule to require private insurers to cover at-home testing is still being drafted, and many details remain to be worked out, including under what criteria they will be reimbursable, officials said.

Those insured by Medicare and Medicaid would not be eligible, but the White House said as many as 150 million people with private insurance would see easier and cheaper access to the at-home tests. The administration said it is making 50 million Covid-19 tests free for older people and other vulnerable groups for pickup at senior centers and community sites.

Beginning next week, the White House said, all travelers to the U.S., regardless of nationality or vaccination status, will need to provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test within one day of boarding their flights. That’s down from three days right now for those who have been vaccinated, in an added precaution against the omicron variant. But the White House has shelved tougher options, like requiring post-arrival testing or requiring quarantines upon arrival in the U.S.

Biden is also extending his directive requiring masks on airplanes and other public transit, which had been set to expire in January, through at least the middle of March, the White House said.

The administration is also informing states that it has more than 60 teams available to help them or their municipalities address surges in cases and public health shortages heading into the winter, with half aimed at bolstering hospital services and 20 targeted at supporting life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday will sign an executive order expanding the membership of the National Space Council as part of efforts to harness space technologies to advance science and math education and tackle climate change.

The Cabinet-level body, which has been focused on national security, space exploration and commerce, will now also include the secretaries of Education, Labor, Agriculture and Interior, along with the national climate adviser, according to a White House official who asked for anonymity in order to disclose details before the announcement.

The expansion highlights “the administration’s emphasis on ensuring the benefits of American space activities are applied broadly throughout society and employed to solve the toughest challenges, including addressing the climate crisis and building a vibrant workforce for the future,” the official said.

The executive order, which marks Biden’s first but largely symbolic foray into space policy, comes ahead of the first public meeting of the council Wednesday afternoon chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris.

The council was revived in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump after a nearly 25-year hiatus. Chaired by then-Vice President Mike Pence, the group was the focal point for a series of presidential directives, including the establishment of the Space Force.

To coincide with the meeting, the White House will also release a seven-page “space priorities framework” outlining the administration’s broad goals.

The document outlines how space is “a source of American innovation and opportunity” and vows to maintain American leadership and “foster a policy and regulatory environment that enables a competitive and burgeoning U.S. commercial space sector.”

It also commits to “enhance the security and resilience of space systems that provide or support U.S. critical infrastructure from malicious activities and natural hazards.”

Calls have grown for securing space systems following Russia’s anti-satellite test last month which created thousands of pieces of debris that pose a hazard to satellites, spacecraft and the International Space Station in an increasingly congested low-Earth orbit.

“The United States will enhance the security and resilience of space systems that provide or support U.S. critical infrastructure from malicious activities and natural hazards,” the White House framework says, adding that the administration will also “bolster space situational awareness sharing and space traffic coordination.”

It does not name Russia or China, both of which are beefing up their ability to threaten space systems by military means.

But Harris has made clear that her priorities for the space portfolio are to expand STEM education and bring the benefits of space to under-served communities, including those most affected by climate change.

“We are on the cusp of historic changes in access to and use of space — changes that have the potential to bring the benefits of space to more people and communities than ever before,” the new White House framework says.

Harris will be introduced at the meeting by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former NASA astronaut. Other council members scheduled to attend include national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Standing in for their bosses will be Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

The council will also hear from retired Adm. James Ellis, who chairs the council’s Users’ Advisory Group, a federal advisory committee that is in the process of being revamped.